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Nuremberg on the Tigris?

By

Con Coughlin

Updated Dec. 12, 2005 12:01 a.m. ET

It was billed as Iraq's day of reckoning, the moment when the Iraqi people would see their tormentor-in-chief brought to account for 35 years of tyranny. But when the trial of Saddam Hussein (and seven other co-defendants) finally got underway last week, it was, perversely, the overthrown dictator who stole the show, treating the court with contempt and behaving as though he were still Iraq's all-powerful ruler.

It will be two years tomorrow that the disheveled Saddam was unceremoniously dragged from his hiding-hole in...